Mobile telephones, and smartphones in particular, are commonly used for communicating with others. Smartphones typically include an operating system as well as a combination of hardware and software to facilitate various forms of communication as well as to take measurements of the environment and to perform other computing functions. In addition to making telephone calls for example, a variety of types data can be generated, stored, and communicated by a smartphone including text messages, videos, images, and so on. Existing smartphones also include applications that can be used for a variety of entertainment and productivity purposes. Such activities further result in an assortment of data being generated and stored on the smartphone. An existing smartphone will further include one or more cameras, geo-location technology which generates, stores, and communicates data about the location of the smartphone, as well as other accessory sensors including gyroscopes, accelerometers, thermometers, and the like. All of these accessory sensors are available to an existing smartphone's operating system, often in ways which the user cannot control or even monitor. Further, the use of a smartphone's cellular telephony equipment causes the device to interact with the cellular communication network, which itself generates a granular data set of the geolocation of the user.
The large amounts of data generated and stored by a smartphone may often be confidential. Accordingly, smartphone users often take measures to try and protect the data. Nevertheless, if a smartphone is lost or stolen or compromised by an attacker, such confidential data could potentially be accessed and exploited by unauthorized individuals. For example, even if a smartphone owner implements a passcode lock, an attacker may circumvent the passcode and gain access to stored data. In some situations, even after the smartphone owner believes to have deleted the data, an attacker or hacker may be able to use forensic techniques to retrieve data from a smartphone. In addition, sensitive data such as the location of a smartphone may be susceptible to being accessed by unauthorized, individuals even while an owner is still in possession of the smartphone. Furthermore, given the broad range of applications of a smartphone, it is difficult for a parent to monitor and control the type of applications being used and the amount of sensitive data being created by a child.
In this manner, a modern smartphone presents an array of security problems which are either impractical or impossible to protect against via currently available means. The functionality of a modern smartphone's operating system and associated hardware are such that a sophisticated attacker will always have a means to compromise the data on the smartphone, no matter what countermeasures the user implements. This is because the smartphone itself is a compact, plenary, recording, environmental-sensing, geolocating, computer processing device which users typically carry on their persons.